Happy birthday, Ribs.

Funny music stuff.  I certainly know who Taj is (and Steely Dan, too).  Grandpa Rock as the kids call it.  Now if they would just get off my lawn.

Busy week.  Seems like I've been dragging everyday.  Humidity?  Not sure. Anyhow I got my 7 MP miles in but was fading by the end.  At least the rain kept things less hot.

Short update: Had fun. Exceeded expectations. 1:33:30. Ninth Crim. Third best time. (This race has never been one that brings out my best performances.)  And I saw Tom2 before the race.

Random ramblings: I would never admit to having any goals before the race because I don't want to have to push myself if I am having an off day.  But now that the race is over, I can say that my "A" goal was a 9:30 pace for a 1:35 finish.

The weather didn't feel too bad.  I knew it was humid, but it was foggy and only 62°, plus there was a bit of a breeze.  I did have a pretty good sweat going by the end of mile 2 so I can attest that it was humid.  I was in the 3rd or 4th starting wave.  I was in view of the 9:30 pacer, but he gradually pulled ahead of me as I seem to have the worst time navigating traffic.  I do not like to waste energy zipping around people, I am too old for that.  I could always see the 9:30 pacer and group and I caught and passed them between 4 and 5 miles.

The whole course is rolling hills.  Nothing too great.  Right at mile 5 are the infamous Bradley Hills which are a set of 3 hills everyone makes a big deal about.  My hill work payed off and I had little problem with Bradley today.  The last 5 miles have many more hills than those and my legs were wearing down by the end.

Near the beginning I heard a guy say that the fog would burn off by mile 4 and we would be baking in the sun.  I was hoping he was wrong, and he was.  Blue skies did start appearing overhead, but off to the east, the fog held on and blocked the sun for a good while.  I hit direct sunlight for the first time at mile 7.8 and by then it was too late to do me much harm.  Sun normally sucks the energy right out of me.

Lots of interesting people to follow and ponytails bouncing around.  You are never alone in this race.  Usually I see some super heroes running, but today all I saw was one guy in a tutu. 

Well, it feels good to slowly be getting some pace back in me after the last couple years of PW after PW.  My splits on my Garmin were: 9:34, 9:18, 9:13, 9:16, 9:08, 9:20, 9:16, 9:22. 9:18, 9:07, and then 0:36 for the last .07  I guess I did some zigging and zagging or took some of the turns too wide.  But .07 isn't too bad.

Pizza and beer at the finish (among other things) and I just took a batch of peanut butter cookies out of the oven for a mid afternoon snack.

Excellent job, Dave!

Greta racing, Dave!  Congrats on hitting your A goal!

Holly, you've got to be the smallest Hulk ever!  Glad you and Renee and Tara had fun at the race.

I planned to do a trail run with some of my ultra friends this morning, but last night my DH wasn't feeling well and said he might need my car to go to an urgent care center today.  (We're down to one working vehicle at the moment.)  But this morning he felt better, so he didn't need the car after all.  I had already missed the run, though, since we were planning to start early.  Oh, well, I went and ran 13 miles in the local state park.  Very steep and technical trails today, so it took 3.5 hours.

I was a roadie for Taj Mahal when he did a concert at U. of PA in the 70s.  My DD is in her 20s and knows who he is, too, because we had a CD of kids songs that he did.

Good Job Dave and Tom in the Crim, especially the fun part.
It doesn’t get much better, . . . except when you can supplement the running part with some jumping, skipping, climbing, shuffling and maybe even some bounding.
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Got my dusty 1990 Canondale road bike down off the garage ceiling for a titular four mile pre-tri test ride for tomorrow’s super-sprint (0.25/12/3.1miles) but just the same old rattling from the pedal crank except when I got the four miles to where I was going, I realized I didn’t have the key to get in where I was going so not only had to ride the four miles back again to where I was coming from so I could get the keys to get into where I was going but thereafter had the same return four miles from where I was coming from in the first place to where I was going.  oh well.
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That’s 12 miles cycling for the year. However, add it to tomorrow’s bike leg in the Lake Meridian Super-Sprint Triathlon and it still won’t even be as many miles as in the 25 mile denise’s covering tomorrow in her Olympic aka “Standard” aka “International” Distance Tri.  whew.

ps - good job too posie and wild.

Great racing Dave and Tom!

Carolyn - glad your DH is feeling better.

I checked the race results and my chip time was slightly better than I had thought - 54:45.  This is still a pretty slow time compared to the real racers, though, so I was very surprised to see that it earned me 3rd place out of 17 in my AG (40-49), 12/56 female and 31/93 OA. I guess the humidity slowed everyone down a bit.